The present invention relates generally to a system for automatically collecting fees and dispensing receipts, and is particularly directed to a system for collecting fees due at regular time intervals, such as Government fees for automobile registration, driver's license extensions, taxes, hunting licenses, and so on.
Currently, Government fee collections are limited to labor intensive offices having limited opening hours and working days. This generally involves the customer in a lengthy wait at times which may be inconvenient. Also, the offices are of a limited number, and centrally located in areas which may be inconveniently situated for many customers. Various mail-in services are available, but require reliance on the mail, planning and early payment of fees. For a variety of reasons, a significant percentage of the public does not utilize mail based registration, license or fee payment systems.
Various automatic, unattended vending machines have been proposed in the past in some fields, particularly banking, postage stamp vending, videotape vending, and airline ticket vending. These generally involve one-off sales of articles or money dispensing. Such systems are generally of limited capacity.
One system for unattended automobile registration has been proposed in the past by Diebold Co. This involves the mailing to each customer of a so-called "Smart Card" containing the particular vehicle registration information, which the customer then uses at the machine to allow dispensing of the appropriate printed receipt or registration form and one or more separate stickers with the registration year and month for applying to the vehicle license plate in the standard fashion. This system is therefore off-line during normal operation, and considerable expense would be involved in producing and mailing the required smart cards. Also, customers may lose the card, or the relatively small sticker which is dispensed separately from the registration form. This system also requires a separate, off-site mainframe computer to control the network of customer machine sites. The off-site mainframe has to maintain a data base containing information on all vehicle files currently in the state computer, which must be continuously updated. This gives rise to various security and logistical problems, which would be a considerable drawback in many cases, and may not be permitted by some authorities.